The Culprit Fay, and Other Poems

Transcribed from the 1836 George Dearborn edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
by joseph rodman drake.
New York: george dearborn, publisher. 1836.
SCATCHERD AND ADAMS, PRINTERS, No. 38 Gold-street.
To her father’s friend, FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, these poems are respectfully inscribed, by the author’s daughter.
The Culprit Fay To a Friend Leon Niagara Song Song Lines written in a Lady’s Album Lines to a Lady Lines on leaving New Rochelle Hope Fragment To --- Lines To Eva To a Lady with a Violet Bronx Song To Sarah The American Flag
“My visual orbs are purged from film, and lo! “Instead of Anster’s turnip-bearing vales “I see old fairy land’s miraculous show! “Her trees of tinsel kissed by freakish gales, “Her Ouphs that, cloaked in leaf-gold, skim the breeze, “And fairies, swarming—” Tennant’s Anster Fair.
’Tis the middle watch of a summer’s night— The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright; Nought is seen in the vault on high But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky, And the flood which rolls its milky hue, A river of light on the welkin blue. The moon looks down on old Cronest, She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast, And seems his huge gray form to throw In a sliver cone on the wave below; His sides are broken by spots of shade, By the walnut bough and the cedar made, And through their clustering branches dark Glimmers and dies the fire-fly’s spark— Like starry twinkles that momently break Through the rifts of the gathering tempest’s rack.
II.
The stars are on the moving stream, And fling, as its ripples gently flow, A burnished length of wavy beam In an eel-like, spiral line below; The winds are whist, and the owl is still, The bat in the shelvy rock is hid, And nought is heard on the lonely hill But the cricket’s chirp, and the answer shrill Of the gauze-winged katy-did; And the plaint of the wailing whip-poor-will, Who moans unseen, and ceaseless sings, Ever a note of wail and wo, Till morning spreads her rosy wings, And earth and sky in her glances glow.